1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a clothes treating apparatus with a liquid reservoir, and particularly, to a clothes treating apparatus having a liquid reservoir for storing therein liquid to be sprayed to clothes, an object to be processed during a clothes treating process.
2. Background of the Invention
Generally, a clothes treating apparatus such as a washing machine and a clothes dryer serves to remove stains or spots and moisture from clothes. For this, clothes are firstly introduced into a drum rotatably installed in a body. The stains or spots of the clothes are removed by friction energy with water, and collision energy, etc., and the moisture thereof is removed by supplied hot blast.
In the clothes treating processes, fragrant liquid may be sprayed into the dram during a drying process so as to provide specific fragrant material to clothes having been completely dried. Furthermore, water or steam may be sprayed into clothes so as to prevent the clothes from being too stiff due to excessive drying, or so as to prevent the occurrence of static electricity.
The clothes treating apparatus includes a liquid reservoir configured to store therein fragrant liquid or water to be sprayed to clothes, a spray means such as a pump and a nozzle configured to spray the liquid stored in the liquid reservoir, a valve configured to connect the pump and the liquid reservoir with each other, etc. The liquid reservoir may be disposed at an arbitrary position of the clothes treating apparatus. However, the liquid reservoir is preferably disposed at an upper side of a body with consideration of efficient space utilization inside the clothes treating apparatus and a user's convenience.
In order to supplement liquid into the liquid reservoir, a user has to be easily accessible to the liquid reservoir. Here, the liquid should not leak or should not be separated from the pump during a clothes treating process. To this end, a drawer type method for mounting a liquid reservoir has been proposed.
According to the drawer type method, a liquid reservoir mounting portion that can be withdrawn to the outside is installed on a front surface of a clothes treating apparatus. Once a user pulls a part of a front panel, i.e., a drawer cover, a drawer coupled to a rear surface of the drawer cover is withdrawn to the outside along a rail. In this state, a liquid reservoir may be mounted in the drawer, or a liquid reservoir mounted in the drawer may be taken out of the drawer.
According to the drawer type method, a pump and a liquid reservoir can be connected to each other as the drawer is simply pushed. This may enhance a user's convenience. However, in order to prevent a connection port between the pump and the liquid reservoir from becoming loose while the drawer is being used, the drawer has to be mounted in the body so as to have a proper frictional force. This may cause the user to have a difficulty in withdrawing the drawer. Furthermore, in order to take the liquid reservoir out of the drawer, the drawer has to be withdrawn with a length longer than that of the liquid reservoir. For smooth withdrawing, an additional rail has to be installed for prevention of frictions or eccentric movements that may occur during a withdrawing process.
Furthermore, since a part of the front panel serves as a drawer cover, design degrees of freedom of the front panel may be degraded. This may be a serious problem when considering a recent trend to prefer a product having a better design to a product having a better function, and the fact that a type of the front panel greatly influences on the entire design of the clothes treating apparatus.